Introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part deals with units of analysis which have been examined since the beginnings of human ecology: communities of smaller or larger scale, cities, and regions and discusses the level of analysis to a familiar point, that of the city itself. It argues that a new paradigm is needed for the multinucleated metropolis, a paradigm which comes to terms with transportation systems and with the new place of the metropolis in an increasingly integrated and centralized national society and also deals with an exhaustive review of studies of regional ecology. The part also discusses literature on the relationship between race and sex in the allocation of occupations, the relationship between ecological change—particularly technological and organizational—and demographic change as reflected by migration and fertility, and studies of nodal and homogeneous regions.